41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making; October 21, 2019; Portland, Oregon Keynote Address The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Confronting the Deadly Arithmetic of Compassion

• Published in: Medical decision making Vol. 40; no. 4; pp. 407 - 415
• Main Author: Slovic, Paul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.05.2020
• Subjects: Decision Making; Empathy; Humans; North America; Societies, Medical - organization & administration; Societies, Medical - trends; North America; affect heuristic; valuing lives; psychic numbing
• ISSN: 0272-989X; 1552-681X
• DOI: 10.1177/0272989X20919294

In this keynote address delivered at the 41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making, I discuss the psychology behind valuing human lives. Research confirms what we experience in our daily lives. We are inconsistent and sometimes incoherent in our valuation of human...